I had four meetings — count ’em, one, two, three, four meetings — on my calendar for today. Researchers were trying to wedge one more in there in between the few null spaces in my day. Me, I’m the researcher.
My first meeting, which was to be the best one of the day, was postponed or canceled. It’s that time of year for everyone, not just you or me. This meeting was to be about a presentation we are delivering next week. This was the get our ducks in a row meeting. Guess who’s ducks are all out of sorts?
Not ours, because we have a plan and a great slide deck. I am working with an amazing colleague on this particular presentation.
My second meeting was a regular committee meeting. We meet for half an hour, every other week. Lovely people. Just happy to be around them. Thoughtful, curious, dedicated, wanna-take-part, sorts of folks. We talked for about 25 minutes about the details of our work and how we might invite this person or that person or all of these people in to a meeting to talk and take a lot at the whatsits and the whosits. And finally, it occurred to me, we’ve been asked to focus on just this one group, not all of the groups. And so we returned to the start of the meeting, essentially.
My third meeting was about sustainability in the classroom. This one was led by a departmental colleague and it was more of a workshop than a meeting. A PLC, they call it, a professional learning community. This meeting is filled with smart people from all number of fields and they are, right now, looking for ways to weave this and that into their own classrooms. I don’t do a lot of that in my classes at the moment — the thises and thats of the environment and ecology conservation and so on. You might think, “You teach sports communication and communication studies, how could you?” And I would say, Thanks for reading my bio.
Then I would say, I have an idea for a future class that fits in nicely with some of what this PLC does. If I’m ever allowed to pitch and offer it, it is going to be awesome. I am trying to get my arms around more than just the basic details.
Today they were using some tool called Padlet which felt very 2.0 Wiki, to share ideas. It is a subscription-based customizable bulletin board with options to populate with text, images, audio, videos, and links. It is like Jamboard. It’s a fun little thing to type in. So people typed in stuff they were working on, and cast about for ideas. I read all of them, because I’m trying to learn stuff and project my project into it. I was also able to add two or three ideas for people, so time well spent.
Then, finally, I wound up the work day with one more webinar, a Q&A session about this work packet I’ve been going on and on about. This was the last minute session. There are a few people on campus who devote just huge amounts of time to this particular chore for everyone else, and good thing, too. We’d probably all be in a much different place if the help didn’t exist. I had three questions, myself, and the answers can be boiled down to: 1.) don’t use that form now use it later, 2.) yes use that form now how did you not know that, and 3.) you are probably correct about the last form, but continue asking around. Two out of three, late on a Friday, is not bad at all. Some other people had questions, and some of which were unexpectedly useful, too, so it was 80 minutes well spent.
Also, today, I got a bit ahead of some class prep for my online course and my in-person Criticism class. And, now, this. So it felt, more or less, like a productive Friday.
I hope yours was too.
